The Weekly Wire: This Week's Recommended Events

Related Content

Film: The Puzzle Master

The least well-known of the New Wave founders, and easily the least prolific, Jacques Rivette created the most mysterious and labyrinthine movies among his fellow critics-turned-filmmakers; they're wonders of theater, art, conspiracy, and imagination. Celine and Julie Go Boating, a 1974 haunted-house fantasy/literary puzzle, is his signature work, and his most imaginative. Two strangers—a cabaret magician (Juliet Berto) and a librarian (Dominique Labourier)—meet, become fast friends, swap places, and unravel the story of the haunted mansion (a veritable film within a film). Think Alice in Wonderland meets Henry James by way of Fantômas. With his stars (and screenwriter Eduardo de Gregorio), Rivette developed this multilayered story of mystery, magic, and adventure. More than three hours long, Celine and Julie is dense yet playful and entertaining, a piece of dream theater full of witty digressions and detours. The film, not available on DVD, begins NWFF's repertory series 35mm: The Celluloid Dream (through Aug. 23) and is followed by Grand Illusion, The Graduate, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Long Day Closes, and The Devil, Probably. (Through Thurs.) Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $5–$10. 7 p.m. SEAN AXMAKER

Comedy: Ride the Snake

I really couldn't stand Aziz Ansari when he first appeared on my radar as an offensively xenophobic fruit vendor on Flight of the Conchords, then as the even more offensive host of the 2007 Sasquatch! Festival. (As I recall, he was booed off the stage after making one gang-rape joke too many.) Yet my irritation took a 180 thanks to Ansari's role on my #1 favorite TV show, Parks & Recreation. His Tom Haverford—government employee, entrepreneur, and inventor of Snake Juice liquor and Tommy Fresh cologne—has a wannabe hip-hop swagger that amusingly echoes Ansari's real-life friendship with Kanye West. Tom's whiny, puppyish eagerness to please makes him impossibly hilarious and lovable. Now that Parks is on summer hiatus, Ansari's Twitter feed, @azizansari, is a guaranteed gut-buster. Mostly he tweets about his favorite TV shows: "Whoa. Not to be racist, but I just flipped through channels & saw an Indian dude on Modern Family & legit thought it was me for 2 secs." He also recently started a hashtag trend #ThronesandRecreation, positing ideas for a mashup of his show and Game of Thrones. What would Tyrion Lannister make of Tom? The Paramount, 911 Pine St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $33.75. 7:30 & 10:30 p.m. ERIN K. THOMPSON

Books: Down by the River

Income inequality and our winner-take-all economy are hard to communicate on a visceral level. FOX News effectively simplifies the issues from a right-wing perspective, so leave it to lefties Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco to try a different approach. Combining journalism and cartooning, respectively, the two set out to chronicle those enduring pockets of poverty and despair in Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (Nation Books, $28). One such enclave is Camden, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from more prosperous Philadelphia. White flight, the loss of unionized manufacturing jobs, and the collapse of its tax base have made the city a destitute dumping ground. All that's left, Hedges writes, are drug dealing, prostitution, scrap-metal yards, and a sewage-treatment plant. He and Sacco visit a homeless camp whose de facto leader tells them, "Everybody is one paycheck away from being here." (Everybody except Mitt Romney, of course.) Sacco's black-and-white illustrations are suitably bleak—fried-chicken shacks, check-cashing joints, and abandoned factories. Hedges will appear tonight to discuss "the story of the weakest forever being crushed by the strong . . . the story of unchecked and unfettered corporate power, which has taken our government hostage." Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

SATURDAY 6/30

Classical: Not a Tux in Sight

At first glance, the Olympic Music Festival, held outside Quilcene on what used to be a dairy farm, might look like a concert series designed by the staff of Martha Stewart Living: picnickers bring stemware and table linens, with decor provided by a vintage wagon wheel placed just so against a genteelly weathered fence. But people mainly love the OMF (starting its 29th season) for its casualness, not its preciousness. You can get close to the musicians inside the acoustically friendly barn where they play, where seating options are a hay bale or a repurposed church pew, or stretch out on the sloping lawn off to one side. Each program is played twice, Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., each weekend through Sept. 2. This opening weekend features music by the Mosaic Brass Quintet; upcoming highlights include an all-Schubert program (July 7–8), Shostakovich's innocuously tasty String Quartet no. 1 (July 28–29), and the premiere of a string duo by OMF pianist Michael Brown (Aug. 25–26). 7360 Center Rd., Quilcene, 360-732-4800, olympicmusicfestival.org. Single tickets: $14–$20 lawn, $18–$30 barn. Flex passes (10 admissions): $180 lawn, $270 barn. GAVIN BORCHERT

Photography: I Can Haz Habitat, Please?

Opening today with a series of panels and tours, the International Conservation Photography Awards Exhibit includes 75 images—of not just cuddly wildlife but also places threatened by pollution and development. It's easier, perhaps because of the Internet's endless supply of squee-worthy critter clips and photos, to focus on the big eyes and soft ears of endangered species. Habitat is a harder sell, especially when it abuts our back lawns. Adorable bear cubs eventually grow into nuisance animals that raid your garbage cans on the Sammamish Plateau. Raccoons are cute at a distance; then they set up a den in your Wallingford basement. Too often we go to parks in search of wildlife, feel disappointed when we see none, then drive home past feathery and furry mounds of roadkill on I-5. Wild animals don't recognize highway maps or park boundaries, so this ICP show can only ask for more awareness on our side of the lens. (Through Nov. 25). Burke Museum (UW campus), 543-5590, burkemuseum.org. $7.50–$10. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

SUNDAY 7/1

Antiquities: Still Big, Still Rich, Still Dead

Things you already know about the pharaoh Tutankhamun: He was a boy king, still in his teens when he died in the 14th century B.C. His gold-and-treasure-stuffed tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings was famously discovered in 1922 by British archaeologist Howard Carter, and King Tut subsequently became the world's most famous mummy. Things you'll learn at the touring exhibit Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs: Tut was tiny (a woven bed and chair are nearly child-sized). He was well-accessorized (the intricately beaded necklaces and earrings are breathtakingly beautiful; a pair of Tut's gold sandals would go nicely with a lot of my summer dresses). His multichambered tomb, containing hundreds of figures of Egyptian gods, a sarcophagus for royal cats, and canopic jars that held Tut's inner organs, is probably bigger than your apartment (well, mine, anyway). But among the 100-plus artifacts on display, the most arresting is the 10-foot quartzite statue of Tut in the entry foyer. Tut's actual body has never left Egypt (and likely never will), but this statue, the largest ever discovered of him, renders the tiny monarch on an appropriately grand scale. (Through Jan. 6.) Pacific Science Center, 200 Second Ave. N., 443-2001, pacificsciencecenter.org. $15.50–$32.50. 9:45 a.m.–6 p.m. ERIN K. THOMPSON